Thread: THE NEWARK FOUR MURDER, ATTEMPTED MURDER VICTIMS

In Memoriam

Terrance Aeriel

December 8, 1988 - August 4, 2007


In Memory of Terrance Aeriel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNpkzhTinc4&NR=1

Dashon Harvey, 20,

R.I.P Dashon You Will Be Missed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LXN914VVw8&NR=1

dashon singin and dancin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svrQSTcXnWE&NR=1

Iofemi Hightower

Octavia
Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Southward
Posts: 430

Iofemi Hightower's Funeral

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I just left the Funeral of Iofemi Hightower and I have to say that I have never saw anything like this. The funeral lasted for 2 hours and I was amazed to see people come from all over to attend. One young lady from Harlem spoke about how our good children's blood are on these streets and we should not have fear. TE2 also spoke, he rolled up his sleeves saying that he did not forget his jacket at home and the men need to go on the battlefield.

It saddened me to view the young lady and see where the wound was on her face. I hope and pray that the Mayor, Paula Dow, McCarthy, Councilman and Councilwoman will do as they say they would to make Newark a better place to live.

Octavia
Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Southward
Posts: 430



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I just spoke with a young lady that works in a certain department and she said that they did not tell people the whole story about what went on during the slaying. Iofemi Hightower's ears were cut off and the the young men were also stabbed by the perps. She also said Natasha was not near the trio and Jose Lachira Carranza tried to rape Natasha and was fighting him off. This was the reason why the man said he heard a young lady saying "Don't do that."

Miss Tam-Tam
MASTER MEMBER Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 2,917

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There was a news report that referred to the defensive marks on Iofemi's body that seemed to have been made by a machete. I know that officials have been very careful to stress that the killings weren't gang-related but this incident has the markings of MS-13. What is the distinction here? The murders were robbery-related but happened to be performed by perps who had connection with MS-13? Here are two seemingly conflicting quotes from today's Ledger:

<<The residents (of Ivy Hill apartments) portrayed Carranza and his cohorts as chronic troublemakers with apparent ties to MS-13, a Central American gang with a growing foothold in Ivy Hill Park.>>

<<Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow has said the Newark killings, apparently motivated by robbery, were not gang-related.>>

http://www.newarkspeaks.com/forum/showt ... hp?p=68856

Natasha Aerial

Only one survived, a bullet still lodged in her face.



Natasha Aerial was shot first, collapsing from a bullet to the face near a set of sports benches. The other three were then marched behind a low wall, forced to kneel down and shot in turn.

Miss Tam-Tam
MASTER MEMBER Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 2,917

The Associated Press

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3 killed execution style behind school

August 6, 2007

Three friends were forced to kneel against a wall behind an elementary school and were shot to death at close range, and a fourth was found about 30 feet away with gunshot and knife wounds to her head, police said.

All of the victims in the shootings late Saturday were from Newark and planned to attend Delaware State University this fall.

No arrests had been made by Monday and authorities had not identified suspects, said Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the Essex County Prosecutor's office.

None of the victims had criminal records, authorities said.

"They were good kids," Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said.

The four had been listening to music in a parking lot behind Mount Vernon School when they were gradually joined by a group of men, authorities said.

Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy said the four exchanged text messages saying they should leave, but were attacked before they could do so.

Police said the attackers shot one young woman, then forced her three companions down an alley, lined them up against a wall, made them kneel and shot each in the head.

Natasha Aerial, 19, was listed in fair condition at Newark's University Hospital, authorities said. Police identified her companions as her brother, Terrance Aerial, 18, Iofemi Hightower, 20, and Dashon Harvey, 20.

The Aerials' mother, Renee Tucker, said the last time she saw them was around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, when they told her they were going around the corner to get something to eat.

"They said they were going to come right back to the house," Tucker said.

Hightower was a motivated student who had recently enrolled at Delaware State, according to great-uncle John McClain.

"She was one of the most beautiful ladies you'd ever want to meet," McClain said. "Very smart, very intelligent. She wanted to be something in life."

In the wake of the killings, Mayor Cory A. Booker again found himself defending his administration's inability to make a dent in the city's murder rate.

"He doesn't deserve another day, another second, while our children are at stake," said Donna Jackson, president of Take Back Our Streets, a community-based organization. "Anyone who has children in the city is in panic mode."

Booker's office didn't return a call for comment on Monday.

A month ago, Booker and Police Director Garry McCarthy announced that crime in the city had fallen by 20 percent in the first six months of 2007 compared to a year ago. Yet despite decreases in the number of rapes, aggravated assaults and robberies, the murders have continued.

Saturday night's killings, along with an unrelated shooting over the weekend that killed a Montclair man, brought Newark's murder total to 60 in 2007. That is three fewer than in the same period in 2006. But there have been 17 slaying in the eight weeks since June 12.

At Delaware State, officials said the school plans to hold a memorial service Aug. 28, after the student body returns for the fall semester.

"While the murder of the two students is a terribly loss in human terms, the facts that they were a part of the DSU family and were striving to earn a degree, create a bright future for themselves and become a solid contributors to society, makes this violent act especially tragic and senseless," university President Allen Sessoms said in a statement.

http://www.newarkspeaks.com/forum/showt ... 771&page=8

Murder, mayhem and illegal entry

Mark Steyn

August 20, 2007

At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die." "They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, N.J., lined up against a schoolyard wall, forced to kneel, and then shot in the head.

Miss Ali poses an interesting question. No one can say why they "had" to die, but it ought to be possible to advance theories as to what factors make violent death in Newark a more likely proposition than it should be. That"s usually what happens when lurid cases make national headlines: When Matthew Shepard was beaten and hung on a fence in Wyoming, Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times that it was merely the latest stage in a "war" against homosexuals loosed by the forces of intolerance; the Shepard murder was dramatized in plays and movies and innumerable songs by Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, Peter, Paul and Mary, etc.

The fact that this vile crucifixion was a grisly one-off and that American gays have never been less at risk from getting bashed did not deter pundits and politicians and lobby groups galore from arguing that this freak case demonstrated the need for special legislation.

By contrast, there have been a succession of prominent stories with one common feature that the very same pundits, politicians and lobby groups have a curious reluctance to go anywhere near. In a report headlined "Sorrow And Anger As Newark Buries Slain Youth," the limpidly tasteful New York Times prose prioritized "sorrow" over "anger," and offered only the following reference to the perpetrators: "The authorities have said robbery appeared to be the motive. Three suspects — two 15-year-olds and a 28-year-old construction worker from Peru — have been arrested." So this Peruvian guy was here on a Green Card? Or did he apply for a temporary construction-work visa from the U.S. Embassy in Lima?

Not exactly. Jose Carranza is an "undocumented" immigrant. His criminal career did not begin with the triple murder he is accused of, nor with the barroom assault from earlier this year, nor with the 31 counts of aggravated sexual assault relating to the rape of a 5-year old child, for which Carranza had been released on bail. (His $50,000 bail on the assault charge, and $150,000 bail on the child-rape charges have been revoked — or at least until New Jersey authorities decide to release him for the mass-murder charges on $250,000 bail.) No, Carranza"s criminal career in the U.S. began when he decided to live in this country unlawfully.

Jose Carranza isn"t exactly a member of an exclusive club. Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim called Muhammad plus an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America"s newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated Muhammad and Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia" groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Muhammad"s hair in the only available mugshot.

As for his illegal sidekick, John Lee Malvo was detained and released by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in breach of their own procedures.

America has a high murder rate: Murder is definitely one of the jobs Americans can do. But that ties young Malvo to Jose Carranza: He"s just another killer let loose in this country to kill Americans by the bureaucracy"s boundless sensitivity toward the "undocumented."

Will the Newark murders change anything? Will there be an Ioefemi Hightower Act of Congress like the Matthew Shepard Act passed by the House of Representatives? No.

Three thousand people died on September 11, 2001, in a mass murder facilitated by the illegal immigration support structures in this country, and, if that didn"t rouse Americans to action, another trio of victims seems unlikely to tip the scales. As Michelle Malkin documented in her book "Invasion," four of the killers boarded the plane with photo ID obtained through the "undocumented worker" network at the 7-Eleven in Falls Church, Va. That"s to say, officialdom"s tolerance of the illegal immigration shadow-state enabled September 11.

And what did we do? Not only did we not shut it down, we enshrined the shadow-state"s charade as part of the new tough post-slaughter security procedures. Go take a flight from Newark Airport. The Transportation Security Administration guy will ask for your driver"s license, glance at the name and picture, and hand it back to you.

Feel safer? The terrorists could pass that test, and on Tuesday morning they did: 19 foreign "visitors" had, between them, 63 valid U.S. driver"s licenses. Did government agencies then make it harder to obtain lawful photo ID? No. Since September 11, the likes of Maryland and New Mexico have joined those states that as a matter of public policy issue legal driver"s licenses to illegal immigrants. So every time you stand in line shuffling along while the TSA guy examines driver"s license after driver"s license you have the privilege of knowing you"re participating in a grand national charade.

Newark is the logical end point of these policies. It is a failed city: 60 percent of its children are raised in households without fathers. Into that vacuum pour all kinds of alternative authority structures: Carranza is alleged to have committed his crime with various teenage members of MS-13, a gang with origins in El Salvador"s civil war of the 1980s that now operates in some 30 states. In its toughest redoubts, immigrants don"t assimilate with America, America assimilates to the immigrants, and a Fairfax, Va., teenager finds himself getting hacked at by machete wielders.

One could, I suppose, regard this as one of those unforeseen incremental consequences that happens in the darkest shadows of society. But that doesn"t extend to Newark"s official status as an illegal-immigrant "sanctuary city." Like Los Angeles, New York and untold others, Newark has formally erased the distinction between U.S. citizens and the armies of the undocumented. This is the active collusion by multiple cities and states in the subversion of U.S. sovereignty. In Newark, N.J., it means an illegal-immigrant child rapist is free to murder on a Saturday night. In Somerville, Mass., it means two deaf girls are raped by MS-13 members. And in Falls Church, Va., it means Saudi Wahhabists figuring out that, if the "sanctuary nation" (in Michelle Malkin"s phrases) offers such rich pickings to imported killers and imported gangs, why not to jihadists?

"Tell Me Why They Had To Die"? Hard to answer. But tell me why, no matter how many Jose Carranzas it spawns, the nationwide undocumented-immigration protection program erected by this country"s political class remains untouchable and ever-expanding.

Mark Steyn is the senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. Publications, senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group, North American editor for the Spectator, and a nationally syndicated columnist.



http://washingtontimes.com/article/2007 ... COMMENTARY

R.I.P Deshon,Terrance,Iofemi, My Fam..Vaness, & Kevin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLS7Mqvr ... ed&search=

College Students Killed Execution-Style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzLBMAPP ... ed&search=

School Deaths That Stunned Black America

After four model students were gunned down in a playground, outrage spread: if the brightest and best are not safe, then who is? Paul Harris in New York reports on the killings that have galvanized a community
Newark is a 25-minute train ride across the Hudson River from the skyscrapers of Manhattan. But its tough streets, scarred by violence and drugs, feel a world away.

Now, after a brutal multiple murder in a school playground, Newark is at the center of a bout of national soul-searching about life in urban America and the violence that marks so much of the experience of inner-city black youth.

The crime has caused shock across the nation not because the victims were involved in a tit-for-tat piece of ghetto violence, but because they were not. They were four young black Americans who had done everything right to grow up unscathed by Newark's social problems. Beating the odds, they had emerged with clean records, bright futures and university degrees ahead of them. But even they could not succeed.

That fact has added to a growing sense of crisis in black America. The deaths came in the same week as a Justice Department report revealed that half of all murder victims in America are black, yet black people make up just 13 per cent of the population. It followed the brutal murder of black newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey, gunned down in broad daylight in San Francisco, who was known for his investigative work. Many are now calling for a national effort to combat violence and poverty in black America. 'It is a social epidemic and it is going to take a multiple-front war of effort to confront this issue,' said Marc Morial, president of civil rights group the National Urban League. 'Unless that happens we are on a slope going down.'

But for now the focus remains on the tragedy in Newark where it seems even the brightest and best of black America cannot avoid falling prey to the plague of street violence. The four victims - two male, two female - were all 'good kids' who had stayed out of trouble. Yet on 4 August they were shot, execution-style in the head, in the innocent surroundings of a school playground.

Only one survived, a bullet still lodged in her face. The reaction to the murders has been a mixture of disbelief and outrage, even in Newark, which has long been a byword for urban blight and a sky-high murder rate. The city's fortunes have been in a rut since it was scarred by race riots in 1967 which saw 26 people killed and ended with massive white flight. Though it is trying to reinvent itself, the latest deaths have raised questions about how much has changed. 'We can't live like this any more. Hopefully, it's a watershed moment in the city,' said Garry McCarthy, its police director.

The four friends - Terrance Aerial, 19, Natasha Aerial, his 19-year-old sister, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20 - had gathered in the playground of Mount Vernon High School in a middle-class Newark suburb on a Saturday night. As they played music at around 11.30pm a group of men approached them.

What happened next is not clear but it is certain that the four knew they were in trouble. They sent each other text messages in their last minutes. One hurriedly typed a poignant last message that simply said: 'Let's get out of here.' It was too late. Natasha Aerial was shot first, collapsing from a bullet to the face near a set of sports benches. The other three were then marched behind a low wall, forced to kneel down and shot in turn.

The sheer pointlessness of the deaths is shocking. All four were models of hard work and good results. Three were students at Delaware State University and another had applied to go. They worked to raise extra cash; none had a police record; three played in a student marching band and one even guided prospective students around Delaware as an ambassador for the university. All of that is gone now. 'It's wrong. They had a goal, they had a purpose, they had destination in life,' said Renee Tucker, mother of Natasha and Terrance Aerial.

But amid the grief some have sought to draw a wider message. James Harvey, father of Dashon, has spoken movingly of the need for parents in the inner city to look at how they are raising their children. 'It's on the parents. When you raise your kids up you teach them right from wrong ... innocent people are dying, needlessly, unnecessarily and for what?' he said. 'I blame the parents of America.'

That is a sentiment shared in the streets of Ivy Hill Park, the suburb where the deaths occurred. The area is one of Newark's middle-class success stories. Its lawns are clipped, its houses sturdy and its crime rate relatively low.

Now its streets are swarming with police cars, stop-and-search operations and almost every tree bears a poster offering a reward for information. 'Stop the killings in Newark now!' blares one sign which has sprouted, mushroom-like, into almost every front garden.

Residents appear united in grief and anger. A little memorial has grown up at the playground spot where the four were gunned down. It is covered in flowers, balloons and candles. A pile of empty buckets marks the area where work crews had to scrub the blood away from the concrete. It is a scene too common in Newark where police investigations usually hit a wall of silence.

In fact Newark, along with several other East Coast cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, has been the center of a notorious 'stop snitching' campaign. Often led by rap artists and linked to drug dealers, the movement has warned local black communities not to talk to the police. But this time is different. 'People are rightfully outraged. That's not a sentiment I've always felt,' said McCarthy.

The result has been a lightning-quick investigation. Already three men are under arrest. One is Jose Carranza, 28, an illegal immigrant from Peru who was already out on bail on sexual assault charges. A key part of the case is information from the sole survivor. Natasha Aerial has been helping police from her hospital bed, including looking through pictures of suspects. She is under constant armed guard to protect her from the witness intimidation attacks that have been a hallmark of the stop snitching movement.

Unlike many violent crimes in Newark at least these murders look as though they will be solved. Not that that will be any consolation. The killings have been a disaster for Newark and for its new mayor, Cory Booker. Booker is also one of the country's best-known rising black politicians. In the era of Barack Obama, the popular young mayor is seen as a dynamic role model for black politicians. When he first joined the city council he won plaudits for a 10-day hunger strike living in a tent outside a drug-ridden building to highlight the crime problem. He also spent five months living in a trailer home that he would park on street corners known for drug dealing. He became hugely popular and the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary. He finally won election to the mayor's office last year.

Typically, he has taken a high-profile stance over the killings. He spoke about the crime to a huge crowd at a local baseball game and was present when Carranza was brought in for interrogation. He also visited Natasha Aerial in her hospital bed. 'We will either rise as a community or fall apart. Our city is stronger than these challenges. We will come together,' he said.

There are signs that is happening. Incredibly it seems that these murders have succeeded where 40 years of politics have failed. Newark, at last, is showing signs of forcefully tackling its problems. Booker unveiled a tough local gun law last week. It could eventually include setting up special 'gun courts' to deal specifically with gun crimes. A new $3m (£1.5m) network of surveillance cameras and gunshot detectors is planned, partly funded by a flood of donations from Newark's citizens.

Even more significant have been the actions of ordinary people. Some young black men, dressed in gang clothes, have signed pledges to put down their weapons. A local anti-violence group called Stop Shootin' is selling its T-shirts and badges as fast as they can make them. Police tip-off lines have been flooded with calls. Local clergy have formed a new youth mentoring program and more than $150,000 has been raised for the victims' families.

There is still a long way to go. Speaking after one press conference, Booker emotionally vented his frustrations. 'I'm very angry right now,' he said. 'We were on our way towards having one of our best summers in years.'

That statement alone shows how bad things have been. So far this year, there have been 64 murders in the city. Seventeen people have been killed since 12 June. In Newark, a 'good summer' is a relative concept.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/149347.html